Earlier this week, when the big BETA stress test weekend was confirmed as being November 25-28, A number of folks cross the twittersphere started hypothesizing that would also entail the NDA being lifted. But I don’t think any of us expected it to happen so soon. But it did — Friday, the SWTOR NDA was lifted, and thus started an avalanche of Star Wars: the Old Republic news across the blogosphere.

I’m still poking around amongst all the fansites that were part of the #SWTOUR earlier this month, and checking out the newly populated DB and WIKI sites, so for now, here are the highlights from the official information released over the past 48 hours:

Spoiler forum launched.
This news caused me to bust out in a big grin because avoiding unwanted spoilers has been a hard task over the past few years. Between general chat spammers oversharing, twitter folks casually spilling the beans, or the developers tossing up a fountain that puts a cinematic you wanted to save all up in your screen, it’s been a real struggle to keep from getting TMI about content I have yet to finish. Although this won’t take care of it in other venues, I love that they are creating this subdivision for their official forums.

Legacy System announced.
Not only will you be able to choose a last name for your character, that name will be used across all your characters on a server, uniting them under a familial name. Per the official forums “any and all characters on that server will now contribute to that player’s Legacy Experience Points. Much like normal experience points, when you reach certain Legacy thresholds, you will increase your Legacy Level.” These legacy points will at a later date translate to rewards or achievements of some sort, thus giving you the ability to have bragging rights for goals accomplished all of your characters, versus having an altaholics achievements tax.